


Baking/Cooking

by H_Faith_Marr



Series: Blue Spirit AU [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blue Spirit AU, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Momtara, Prompt: Baking/Cooking, zuko can cook in this au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:21:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21867442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/H_Faith_Marr/pseuds/H_Faith_Marr
Summary: Surprisingly, the Blue Spirit can cook. Unsurprisingly, the course of events that reveals this fact gives Katara even more questions.
Relationships: Katara & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Blue Spirit AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1574527
Comments: 55
Kudos: 1550





	Baking/Cooking

When Appa lands that evening for them to make camp, Katara has to expressly forbid their new companion from helping with the heavy lifting like setting up tents or gathering firewood. She thinks he might actually be listening, as he sits by their designated fire pit, even if he _does_ take the spark rocks from Sokka to start the fire himself.

 _He’s thin_ , Katara worries, not for the first time, as she sets out the supplies to make dinner. _Too thin. It can’t be easy to get food on his own, especially if he travels as much as I think…_

She glances over at where he is playing with a dagger he much have had hidden on himself, passing it through the flickering flames that reflect off his mask eerily. Though… he leans back as he does so, keeping as much space between him and fire pit as possible (just, it occurs to her, as he had done when starting the fire in the first place). He visibly relaxes as he pulls the knife back and inspects it carefully.

Not playing, she realizes. Sterilizing. 

(Another small part of her wonders how long ago he was burned, and if it was a firebender that made him that way.)

Apparently satisfied with his work, he holds out one hand in her direction, palm up and expectant. Her eyes dart from his hand to his knife to his mask, perplexed, until he motions to the vegetables in her lap and the pot at her side. 

His intentions click into place. 

“ _Oh_ ,” she flushes, fumbling with a pouch of potato-beets and handing them over. “Here.”

He accepts them with a slight inclination of his head, as Sokka loudly informs the general vicinity that he is going hunting to nab some fresh meat. Katara rolls her eyes at his antics before returning her focus to the task at hand, ducking away from the camp for a moment to get water from the nearby river. 

At her return, the first thing she sees is Aang fluttering around a quietly irritated Blue Spirit as the latter mixes some sort of dough in a wooden bowl.

“Aang,” Katara chides, placing the pot over the flames to boil. “Unless you want to help too, give us some space.”

The boy’s eyes widen in comical alarm, and he quickly leaps away from the fire, which gutters briefly in his wake. Blue flinches, and shoots him a no doubt baleful look, then pointedly turns back to the dough under his hands.

His _ungloved_ hands, she notices belatedly. Pale and calloused, scarred thickly around the wrists with a smattering of old spark-burns along his fingers, deftly working the dough as if he was born to it. With hardly a curve of the wrist, he sections it off into four round pieces and, hesitantly, places them on a flat rock that he pushes into the edge of the fire pit with the toe of his boot.

He looks up, only to catch her staring. Before she can speak —to apologize, or reassure, or both, she doesn’t know— he ducks his head and tugs his gloves back on hastily, half turned away from her.

She wonders, again, if he is really so afraid of fire, and why.

The water boils, and she drops the prepared vegetables into it. She hesitates with the unfamiliar seasoning, and so Blue beats her to it, adding and mixing spices that she didn’t expect. Not that she really knows how to use Earth Kingdom spices.

She thanks him, when he’s done. He stills, turns to her with what might even be surprise, before ducking his head again and retreating back to his seat. She barely catches the hand surreptitiously pressed against his side, and firmly suppressed the flare of worry. She’s sure he would only brush it off, anyway.

The stew turns out better than she had hoped, and the bread Blue had cobbled together is light and rich and honestly a miracle because nothing that good could possibly be made from what they had in their bags.

It improves Sokka’s mood drastically from what it was after his failed hunting trip, despite the lack of meat, and Aang eats almost a third of it on its own. Blue, on the other hand, appears reluctant, one hand on his mask as if debating whether or not to take it off.

“You need to eat, you know.” Katara reminds him, serving him up a bowl herself.

He accepts the bowl with such tentative eagerness that she has to wonder when the last time he shared food with another person was. He scrawls a quick thank you with his toe, the first words he used since they’d touched down, both hands clutching his bowl as if he is afraid that it will be taken away.

She backs off, gives him his space as the other two wisely retreat to the tents, and waits.

Still, he hesitates, fingers hooked around the edge of his mask without lifting. His hand trembles, and he drops it with a small shake of his head that seems to be more for him than for her.

“I understand.” She folds her hands in front of her to keep from reaching out and spooking him. “It’s been a long time since someone’s seen your face, hasn’t it?”

Careful not to spill, he places the bowl at his feet and snatches up a stick. _The mask is safe._

“I know we didn’t give you much choice about being here,” she offers, hoping that isn’t the source of the problem. “But we’d never to anything to hurt you.”

_Not the Blue Spirit, no. But underneath?_

“Underneath, too.” She assures him as firmly as she can muster. “We want to help.”

Again, he raises his hand to reveal his face, and again, he wavers. He drops it to his lap with a frustrated sigh and pushes his bowl away with an air of defeat.

Katara purses her lips. That wouldn’t do. “Just because you aren’t comfortable with me seeing your face doesn’t mean I won’t let you eat dinner. I’ll give you some privacy and keep the others off your back. If you want to show us your face, it should be because you trust us, not because you need to in order to survive. You don’t owe us anything.”

He startles, again, as if her consideration is as completely unthinkable as her thanks. She stands and leaves the fire before she thinks too much on it.

After all, she doesn’t want to scare away the best cook in the camp. It’ll be awhile until he heals, and she can keep working on his trust for as long as he sticks around... and maybe gets some tips on cooking, while she’s at it, in case he leaves her to cook alone again. 

Though she’ll do her best to make sure that doesn’t happen. He clearly needs some people in his corner.


End file.
